First day of the Abu Dhabi Science Festival and workshops have just opened. We're down at the Corniche (the beach) along with many other workshops both inside and outside (primarily in air conditioned tents as it's so hot out here).

A few months ago we pitched a few ideas to them thinking that we might convince them to go for one, but they asked for all three. So here we are, with a couple of weeks of workshops, making UV torches, chocolate and orange caviar and racing our mini robots. We're planning to build over 5000 torches over the next 10 days and for people to make over 10,000 serves of caviar.

The caviar is made using two food-grade chemicals (sodium alginate and calcium chloride) which react together when drops of one are added to a bath of the other, forming spherical 'pearls' of pretty much any flavoured liquid you want. As it's a Muslim country, we've replaced the Cointreau with orange essence. (And we've also had to up the sugar content in the chocolate mixture considerably, as it seems like they've got a pretty sweet tooth over here!)